


Count Down To The End

by Dikhotomia



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Bioterrorism, Bioweapons, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, F/F, Human Experimentation, Medical Experimentation, Politics, Slow Burn, Super Soldiers, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:20:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23179120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "A blackened sky shall herald the return of God-----And the world shall be consumed once again by flame--"--Gladius Invidia Deo//END TRANSMISSION. . .The sirens wind up in the wake of the announcement, ghostly and distant from where her team has set up in one of a dozen abandoned convenience stores. She listens to the way they echo, reverberating off blown out buildings and crumbling bridges. She remembers a time when all of this was different, when people roamed the streets and lived in the buildings and ran the stores. When afternoon traffic clogged the streets, horns blaring and people yelling out car windows. She remembers these same streets before the war, before gunfire and bodies littered her old hangouts.The sirens wail, long and wounded, another psalm sputtering out from aged speakers running on a power grid independent from the rest of the city"
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 78





	Count Down To The End

**Author's Note:**

> SALUTATIONS I am experimenting with this so updates will be slow while I work stuff out. This is super on the nose, I know, but the idea bit me and holy fucking shit did it not let the fuck go so I word vomited this and yea. Dystopian FE3H based loosely off Nine Inch Nails' concept album 'Year Zero.'
> 
> Unbeta'd as usual so all my mistakes are my own oversight.

_"A blackened sky shall herald the return of God-----And the world shall be consumed once again by flame--"_

\-- _Gladius Invidia Deo **//END TRANSMISSION. . .**_

The sirens wind up in the wake of the announcement, ghostly and distant from where her team has set up in one of a dozen abandoned convenience stores. She listens to the way they echo, reverberating off blown out buildings and crumbling bridges. She remembers a time when all of this was different, when people roamed the streets and lived in the buildings and ran the stores. When afternoon traffic clogged the streets, horns blaring and people yelling out car windows. She remembers these same streets before the war, before gunfire and bodies littered her old hangouts.

The sirens wail, long and wounded, another psalm sputtering out from aged speakers running on a power grid independent from the rest of the city. She watches as the sun dips lower in the sky, glancing red and gold off the remains of windows and casting the city in long bleeding shadows. "Pull the shutters down," she says, waving to the other people scattered nearby her. "Get away from the windows." She steps back as her orders are carried out, the metal shutters clattering down as flashlights burn to life to ward off the pitch black of the store and the coming night.

Out of the corner of her eye her team moves, beams of light bouncing while they spread out through the store, picking their way across fallen shelves and blown out lights hanging precariously from the ceiling. She picks her way to the nearby counter, stepping around a pile of debris. 

Outside the wailing subsides, the last notes dripping like ice water down her spine.

She remembers coming here after school, a few dollars held in a tiny fist and a grin on her face, for candy she couldn't get anywhere else. Remembers the face of the old lady that ran the place, how she knew her by name and always asked her how she was doing in school. She does her best to tuck those memories aside as she vaults over the counter and picks her way through the back rooms, searching for anything that might be of use.

They're not supposed to be here.

"Hey!" whispered, the word still like a gunshot in the silence. "I found something." She hears shuffling, the crunch of broken tile and glass under heavy boots, a flashlight beam sending shadows scattering across the floor and walls.

"This is ten years old." Distressed, and she recognizes the voice as Ingrid. "We have rations, it's not like you need to go foraging for old foods."

"Your loss, I'm gonna dip my rations in this ten year old peanut butter." Claude, and she can hear the grin on his face. Imagines the way his shoulders rise when he shrugs. 

"I am not carrying you if you get sick." Hilda, voice high and exasperated. Someone shushes her, silence cascading through the store as all of them suddenly stop to listen. No one moves, no one breathes, hands on guns and eyes trained on windows. She stays tucked behind the counter, peering over the edge and watching for the hulking shadow of one of the crest beasts they all knew to be out wandering from where they hid during the day.

Seconds drip into minutes and into what feels like an eternity before someone sneezes and the tension drops out from underneath them, muted laughter breaking through between a quiet apology; "Sorry, the dust in this place got to me, man."

"Keep your mask on then," she drawls, rising to her feet and leaning against the counter. "That's one of the reasons we have them." Aside from protection and anonymity to anyone outside their faction. 

"Easy for you to say, Edelgard." This from Sylvain, grin easy and helmet held under one arm. "Not all of us are super soldiers made to be able to slog around in heavy armor and helmets for hours without rest."

It picks at her in a way she knows Sylvain doesn't mean, settling ugly in the pit of her stomach. She knew most of the unit was wary of her, wondering if she was some sort of Government sleeper agent despite them all knowing she hadn't been programmed yet. Her will was still her own and she was silently thankful to them all for pulling her out of the tank when they did.

A day later she might have not been _Edelgard_ anymore.

"I know you aren't," she replies, a little more clipped then she intends. "I apologize."

She catches the guilt that crosses Sylvain's face at her reply, and the subsequent withering glare Ingrid fixes him with. "You know that's a sensitive topic," Ingrid hisses as Edelgard vanishes back into the office. She tunes out the rest of the conversation out of habit.

Hubert joins her a moment later, a shadow separating from the dark corners of the office. "Are you alright?" He asks, watching her as she tests the old chair. 

"I'm fine," she replies, sinking into it when she decides it would still hold her weight, shifting her feet as it's wheel catches on a chipped tile. "One of these days I'll be used to how they think of me."

One of them but not, a single soul liberated from a bombed out lab. It didn't change what she had been made in to against her will, a weapon. At least, she thinks bitterly, watching as Hubert settles nearby her, perched like some kind of bird of prey on the edge of the desk, I've been pointed in the right direction.

"You should try and sleep," Hubert comments, pulling her from her thoughts. "I've taken first watch with Ferdinand." 

"So long as you wake me up when it's my turn," she replies, lips quirked in a smile that still feels alien to her, feels like it sits wrong, never quite reaching the eyes.  
If Hubert is bothered by it he doesn't show it. "Of course."

She knows he won't. She doesn't hold it against him.

_**23 Hours Earlier --New Enbarr** _

There's fifteen of them settled around a table, quiet and in various states of relaxed to professional. She sits away from the rest of them, fingers threaded together and a nightmare fresh at the forefront of her mind. Her hands tremble and her fingers tense to stop it. " _You'll be feeling the withdrawal for a while_ ," her doctor had told her, a tired, sarcastic man with green hair and blue eyes. " _in fact, I suspect there will be lasting damage for how careless the extraction team was in pulling you out_." She understood the words 'withdrawal' and 'lasting damage' and had quietly filed them away in the back of her mind.

She didn't blame the extraction team for rushing to free her, they hardly had time to wait for the tank to drain, to wait until her body decided to reboot itself. Pulling her out cold was the only way they could get out before the Government's teams came down on them.

_\--And there's a fresh memory of feeling like she's drowning, bubbles frothing from the mask clamped over her face as an alarm screams, lungs expanding and nerves jump starting, the heart monitor beside her beeping as frantically as the alarm. She sees people through the glass, a half dozen of them, covered head to toe in black and red. Faces obscured by masks and voices distorted as they start shouting orders to one another. The power sputters, sparks showering down from a blown out light, smoke spilling from the hallway._

_Her hands thump against the tank as one of the masked soldiers swims into her line of sight again, reinforced glass cracking under the first blow, splinters crawling up as fluid escapes. For a precious second she feels like a fish in a tank, withdrawing her hands from the glass and floundering. The machines go off and her vision swims as the glass shatters, spilling her out into the arms of the waiting soldier. Her skin burns, nerves screaming, lungs and organs shocked from the sudden shift. She can't breathe suddenly, smoke and fluid clogging in her throat and her lungs and the soldier above her is speaking words she can't hear._

_Somewhere she passes out---_

She comes back on the hiss of a door opening, eyes lifting from her focus on the table to the woman who enters. Tired and pale, a thick file held underneath her arm. Rhea she remembers her as, as much resistance as she was working for the Government itself. A woman hiding in plain sight and in more danger then any of the others here. They were all living underneath the noses of those who had taken over after the war, living normal lives, working normal jobs.

Even her, an escaped super soldier, had managed to insert herself into the general populace and be forgotten about. It wasn't anything new to her, but coming back from the experiments and the grueling training and the drugs they had pumped her full of was. It had taken nearly a year of intensive therapy for her to be able to function like a normal human again. Taken three months more for her to finally feel confident enough to merge back into the population.

Two to decide she wanted to side with the resistance after Rhea had offered her a place. " _Stay or go, the choice is yours._ "

"--There's a pocket of Government soldiers outside of the area that used to be Enbarr city." 

She blinks, breathing in and focusing back on Rhea as she speaks. File set down on the table and fingers ghosting the metal. "I'm not sure what they're up to but rumors in the pipeline say they're testing a new project. Since we took The Flame Emperor from them." Her eyes fall on Edelgard where she sits at the far end, and Edelgard averts her attention from the way everyone turns to look at her. She wrings her hands. The latest and greatest in their line of manufactured soldiers, stronger, faster, nearly invincible. 

Edelgard thought it was a whole lot of bullshit, but here she was.

"They were trying for something more," she says, voice low. "They want to try and create a Bio-weapon like the Crest Beasts."

The silence that drops is interrupted only by the ventilation system clicking on overhead. It feels like no one breathes, and Edelgard doesn't dare look up. Doesn't want to meet the eyes of the people who sit around the table. She knows them all by name, knows their faces and the hesitant way they watch her.  
"Is that what they were trying with you?" Rhea asks, and she hears as the older woman settles down at the head of the table.

"Yes," she replies, daring to look up. "But you got me out before they had a chance to start the second phase of experiments."

There's a collective breath, looks exchanged and a few relieved smiles aimed in her direction. 

_We still think you're a time bomb, but at least you won't turn into a monster when you finally blow._

Her smile is bitter.

"Well now that we know that," Rhea says, sitting straight and addressing the room as a whole. "This next assignment just got a whole lot more important. I want you all to find out what those soldiers are doing, whether it's some kind of training, dealing with a nest of Crest Beasts or if it has anything to do with this new project." She trails off, everyone nods.

"Hresvelg, since you know the area that used to be Enbarr I'm putting you and Hubert in charge of the strike team this time."

She's not ready, but her training kicks in anyway, expression sealing off from the stupefied one she had been wearing a moment ago. "Yes ma'am." She's not ready, and everyone around her knows she's not, but with Hubert at her side she could manage somehow.

A familiar face in a sea of strangers. 

Rhea begins to speak again, and it's all things Edelgard has heard before. Protocol, location, equipment load outs. She listens because it's what she was trained to do, every word and blink and expression filed away in the back of her mind.

"One last thing," Rhea says as she stands, fixing them all with a quiet look. "Don't get caught."

_**Present Time -- Enbarr City Ruins** _

_\--She's a child again, running along sidewalks and between people, Hubert and another girl at her side, laughing._

_She's a child again, sitting atop her apartment building balcony with Hubert and someone else, watching the stars and making wishes among fits of giggling. "Hey," the girl with her whispers when Hubert goes to get them more snacks. "Let's make a promise."_

_"A promise?" Edelgard asks, scooting closer until her thigh touches the other girl's. "What kind of promise?"_

_"That we'll always be friends no matter what."_

_She's a child again, huddled in the shadow of an alley with the girl whose face she barely remembers as the tanks rumble by, the shadows of soldiers spread long and ghastly as they march. Someone is shouting, demanding and voices rise in crescendo in response until a gunshot rings and the demands turns to screams._

_The bombs go off a week later---_

Someone's hand brushes her shoulder and she snaps awake in a sharp inhale, tense and ready to fight. "Edelgard, it's only me," Hubert assures, withdrawing and holding his hands up. "We're ready to move out when you are." Sunlight filters in between the shutters and she can hear the others shifting around and talking, voices hushed. Edelgard nods once, rising to her feet and stretching.

They're out the doors minutes later, helmets back in place and guns held tight. They fan out and move as one through the blasted out streets, weaving between rusted cars and split pavement. "The transport will arrive at the rendezvous point in two hours," Hubert says over the radio as they pick their way underneath an overpass, inching through the shadows and listening.

"We're ten minutes out from the target area," Hilda says a second later. "Let's get this over with so I can finally go home, bathe and sleep in a real bed."

"Cut the chatter," Ingrid hisses, and Edelgard catches sight of her out of the corner of her eye as she moves by, Sylvain a few inches behind. Mentally she places Hubert behind her, followed by Claude and Hilda in the rear. 

It's silent save the crunch of their boots and the wind that whistles through allies and broken windows, aged buildings groaning. There's no birds, no small animals to brave the busy roads and sidewalks. It's nothing like she remembers it, mind trying to catch up from the day she was dragged away to now.

She'd never get used to it, having been disorientated since the moment she stepped off the transport.

"This your first time outside since we pulled you, huh." Sylvain comments as Edelgard directs them down an alleyway. "I was pretty shocked my first time and I wasn't underground for ten years."

"It's a lot to take in," Edelgard replies, lifting a hand and gesturing to Claude behind her. "You're up."

"Sure thing," Claude interjects, slipping by, lowering his gun in favor of the tactical binoculars hanging at his hip. She steps back to give him room, watching his back as he scans the area. Seconds tick by again, a breeze kicking up a tornado of sand and withered papers, sending it hissing across the street away from them. "No guards," he says finally, then pauses, the sound of his breath catching in his throat bringing her attention swinging back. "But there's sure a lotta blood, looks like our friends got into some trouble."

"What do we do?" Ingrid asks, easing her way out of the mouth of the alleyway. "Do we proceed or?"

Edelgard considers, silently weighing the options; either they proceeded or returned to the rendezvous point empty handed and waited around until the transport arrived. While her soldier's instincts said one thing, the still human part of her told her to turn around and leave. The squabble is short and vicious, taking place in the span of a blink.

The soldier wins.

"We proceed," she says, looking at them all. "With even more caution, if we run into trouble we'll retreat immediately." This isn't anyone's first rodeo, after all, each and every one of them was trained and had faced down both Government soldiers and the Crest Beasts that crawled the shadows after the sun set. Some of them in much closer quarters. "I'll take point," she assures, lifting her gun and heading forward. She hears them as they all fall into step behind her, fanning out just enough to have room to move and fire.

There's no attempts at small talk this time, the silence suddenly charged like the calm before a storm. Thick and heavy and suffocating. She hopes it's nothing, hopes that the blood belonged to a Crest Beast and that the soldiers who had killed it had simply left. She knows it's anything but, training dictating that nothing but danger lurks past the yawning entrance to the building they head towards, blood streaking startling across the pavement and along the wall. "Night vision," Edelgard whispers as they make their way inside, inching through the shadows as they fall across each of them and consume them hole. "No flashlights. Speak only if you have to."

A quiet collection of 'rogers' filter over the radio before silence reigns again. And it's different this time, something absolute and consuming, eating away even at the slight echos of their steps and their breathing. She feels the way the others close in behind her, tensing slightly when someone's back brushes against her own. The hallway filters in in shades of green, and she pins it as a converted office building, rebuilt just enough to be used by the Government for whatever the hell they had been up to.

She wonders if it was a facility like the one she had been held in, scanning for any sort of way down the deeper they head inside. They check room by room, pushing doors open with the muzzles of guns and peering inside to find almost nothing each time. Room after room, desks and empty boxes, broken computers.

"Looks like they were clearing out before they got interrupted," Claude comments once they reach the end of another hallway, collected outside the one room they hadn't searched yet. "What do you bet this room is as empty as the last?"

Edelgard doesn't say anything as she turns the knob and cracks the door open, easing slowly inside. "Holy shit," Sylvain whispers behind her as the contents of the room are exposed to everyone. "What is this, some kind of torture chamber?"

It's far from empty, and Edelgard trades her night vision for a flashlight once it's clear nothing is going to jump out at them. A surgical table sits on the far end of the room, lights laying askew across a floor covered in blood. Papers lay scattered across the surface of the only desk nearby, and it takes her a second to register the sound she hears as a running sink overflowing onto the tile below.

"This is a testing area," Edelgard says, staring at the mess and picking out only the important parts. "It's common for them to take their current projects out to isolated one time use facilities and have them run combat or life simulations to see where they can be assigned, whatever was being tested here went out of their control."

She steps aside as Hubert eases by her and deeper into the room, eyes following his path to the desk. He pauses, lifting one of the papers to read it. "It's nonsense," he says, turning to look at them. "Random sentences strung together into something vaguely medical sounding."

"For realism," Edelgard replies, tilting her head. "Subjects often don't bother trying to read anything laying around, and if a facility is found no information can be gained."  
Hubert makes a noise like he'd swallowed something sour as he tosses the paper back down to the desk. 

"So do you think this was the result of their new project?" Ingrid asks, leaning against the door frame beside her.

"Possibly," she returns, glancing at her. "We shouldn't linger. We only have an hour to make it back to the rendezvous point."

They leave without further discussion, and without further incident, alternating between walking and jogging until they reach the stretch of empty road outside the city. The ride back is a silent one, each of them lost in their own heads, helmets set between feet and guns laid across their knees. 

Rhea is waiting for them when they make it back to the base, showered and dressed to rejoin the world until they're needed again. "What did you find out?" she asks as soon as Edelgard is within earshot, the rest of the team easily falling in around her.

"We confirmed that it was a testing ground," Edelgard replies, staring at a point over Rhea's shoulder. "And that whatever they were testing there was more than they could handle, lot of blood in places and they cleared out in a hurry. There's a small chance they were interrupted and an even smaller one that the subject escaped."

There would have been a much bigger mess then, which made the former more likely in her mind then the latter. 

Subjects didn't escape without outside help.

"Alright," Rhea murmurs, frowning. "I'll see if I can dig anything up, until then...business as usual."

They all nod and disperse, vanishing into different parts of the complex and out into different parts of the city, blending back in with the populace like they had never left. _This,_ Edelgard thinks as she steps out onto the busy streets, people milling about and cars sitting in deadlocked afternoon traffic, _I'm used to this._ Except she's not used to the propaganda laced adverts flickering across buildings, or the walls that crawl high and foreboding around the city, keeping people in as much as they keep the monsters outside out.

A very nicely put together cage, coming with the price of absolute obedience. 

Edelgard pulls her hat low over her eyes, inserting herself into the crowd of people passing her by. She stops at a nearby coffee shop, faking greetings and pleasantries as she orders. She drinks her coffee like the rest of the people, stands and waits and listens as an ad drones about protection and how God would one day remake the world for the devout.

 _Bullshit_ , she thinks as she crosses the street, coffee cup arched into a trash-bin and hands shoved in her pockets. _It's all bullshit._ She makes another stop at the grocery store, picking up a few things Hubert had asked her for the day before they were sent off on their mission, pausing when she thinks she catches sight of a familiar face. 

_Blue hair, blue eyes and a warm smile. What was your name?_

She shakes it off, pushing it aside and checking out.

Hubert is already home by the time she pushes through the door to their shared apartment, and she hangs her coat by his, sets her boots by his and makes her way deeper into the apartment.

Business as usual.

 _ **Unknown Transmission//**_ _Welcome to the Screaming Eagles cadet---this is just the beginning--_

_**YOU ARE THE RESISTANCE.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos) It's the best place to see me vague post about what I'm working on.


End file.
